July 16
I was so excited about escaping the red pen that I neglected to mention how many words I wrote for that article. It was 871 words, so it’s not an overly long read. It is so not overly long that you should click here to read it. Go on, you won’t regret it. Or you might. Live dangerously, why don’t you?
July 17 & 18
If you read my June breakdown and were lamenting the fact that I’m no longer grouping stuff together and helping your eyes, lament no more (and wait until you see my next group).
I wrote another article about Till Death to Us Party‘s progress, and the red pen edits across the second half of the book. 2,421 and 894 words combined comes to a total of 3,351 words written over the course of these two days. Why not follow this link and read those 3,351 words?
July 19-26
Okay, first things first. In case it got lost amongst the wall of tweets right there, I wrote a review for the third book in A.R.K Horton’s The Telverin Trilogy, Racing With the Serpent. You can check out that review here, and I would also encourage to check out the book. It’s a good one.
Now I’ve gotten that out of the way, I’ve grouped eight days together, and this is worthy of a couple of images.
First up, we have this lovely mysterious teaser image.
And secondly, we have this teaser: It’s the same image, but there’s some text on there.
Days 19-26 of the challenge were a bit of a nightmare. I decided to write a new smartworld short for the website (The Slumlord) with the idea of posting it in July. After making it through 7,872 words, I realised I’m not digging it. It’s slow, it rambles, and not a lot is happening. So after dedicating a week to it (with the eighth day seeing me write the aforementioned book review), I’ve put a pin in it. For now, at least: I’ll get back to it, and would like to be able to promise that it’ll hit sometime in August, but I can’t. When inspiration hits, I’ll get back to it, finish the draft, then pull it apart.
While I am not happy with the way The Slumlord is turning out, I can’t deny the success of those eight days. 7,842 words on a short story, and another 984 for a book review means 8,856 words in total. Day 26 also saw me pass 15,500 words written for the month, officially beating the month’s challenge for words written. The total challenge for hours editing was beaten long ago.
July 27
So, if I’m not writing a short story, how am I going to continue this challenge? By jumping back into Till Death Do Us Party‘s second draft edits and rewrites. I didn’t add many words to the total, and thus didn’t bother counting them. But I spent an hour and fifteen minutes editing, which got me about halfway through the chapter.
June 28
Not a hugely productive day here. One hour of editing, so it counts as a win against the challenge, but doesn’t mean anything more than that. Other than Chapter 16’s rewrites being completed, that is. I also wrote another 707 words for an article on the site. What article is that? This one here, FYI.
July 29
A fairly simple update, but also reasonably productive. A clean two hours spent editing Till Death Do Us Party, chapter 16.
July 30
On the second last day of the challenge, I wrote 1,141 words for a book review. The book in question? The Well at the Bottom of Everything by Michael James. Spoiler alert, you should read the book. You should also read the first in the series, The Hotel at the End of Time.
July 31
And on the final day, I spent an hour and a half editing and rewriting. I got through all of chapter 17 and part of chapter 18. Not a hugely climactic climax, but what are you gonna do?
Other than click through to the next page for the high-level overview of how the entire month went.
wastanley.com 